


Orion

by foxes_cant_fly



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Moon, Orion, Outer Space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10388385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxes_cant_fly/pseuds/foxes_cant_fly
Summary: Tyler looked up from his work on the capsule, then something caught his eye. A spinning, bright object had stood out from the blackness of space in the corner of his vision, and it was headed to them. It wouldn’t seem like a threat, but in space, even a tiny piece of metal, a screw, or even a paint chip could be extremely dangerous. The fox reached over to the little panel on he arm of his suit and pressed the button to turn on comms again. “Uhh, be advised, we have some more debris headed our way. We may need to use RCS to avoid it."Samuel’s voice came on. "Gotcha, Ty. We’ll-” he was cut off by the impact of the debris. It had been moving faster than he thought, and punctured a tank mounted on the side of the craft, causing an explosion that was eerily silent in the void of space.The crew of the Orion Space Exploration Mission are headed to the moon for the first time in nearly fifty years. Their ambitious journey brings excitement to both the mammals involved, as well as civilians who look to the stars in awe. But another thing it brings might be a means to the astronauts' end.





	1. Chapter 1

"Are you ready to go to some of the farthest distances any mammal has ever gone?"

Ty looked at the otter from his seat on the bench and raised an eyebrow. "If I wasn't ready, I would have quit a long time ago, Daniel." The fox said. He wouldn't have been so snarky if he wasn't secretly nervous about the mission. He had visited space once before on a resupply mission to the space station, but he had returned after everything was unloaded. Going to the moon was vastly different than going into orbit around the earth.

Daniel Elliot was the otter who had asked him the question. Besides himself - Tyler Burns - and Daniel, there was one other mammal in the room, Samuel Reid. The hare was occupying himself with getting ready. He, too, was anxious about their journey, but kept to himself because of the fact.

The three of them were in a locker room at the space center preparing to don their flight suits. The launch would be in less than two hours. In the female locker room across the hall, Holly Barker and Ana Summers were doing the same, though with admittedly less talking involved.

After Ty's comment, Daniel fell silent and went back to focusing on getting ready. Each of the mammals had specialized flight suits to fit their body's size and proportions. The equipment was very different from what was used on the Apawllo missions nearly five decades ago, the main difference being the fact that the helmets now moved freely, allowing for a wider viewing angle from the operator. Before, the helmet and suit had been fixed together, leaving the mammal inside only enough sight as they could turn their head; the entire body would have to move in order to get a new angle.

Even though they had new suits, there were still a couple problems, with the most prominent being tails. For mammals with longer tails, the suit has a small section of its posterior for stuffing a tail into. It would be too expensive to have an entire section of the suit added to comfortably fit the tail. The same went for ears. If you had ears that were too big, you just had to put them behind your head for the duration of wearing the suit.

Eventually, the three of them had their suits on, helmets off and being held by their sides. They met the females in the hallway, then together walked to the vehicle that would take them to the launchpad. The ride was silent - no one wanted to talk because of how nervous they all were. Eventually, they were close enough to the pad to realize just how massive the rocket was. Towering nearly four hundred feet in the air, it was quite majestic. Its size made sense, though. It would be carrying them over 200,000 miles to the moon, and then back. That's a lot of fuel. The cylindrical mass of pure power stood, gleaming white in the morning sun.

They pulled up to the launch tower and rode the elevator up. Ty stole a glance over the edge before they made it to the top. The vehicle that they had rode was now driving away and looked tiny from this distance. He let out a breath and moved back toward the center of the platform. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the five astronauts made it to the top. They walked to their capsule and entered one by one. Each went to a seat and secured their helmet.

After a few minutes of pre-flight checks, the countdown started, both through the chatter in the headsets of their helmets as well as on the TV broadcast that was no doubt being watched by millions.

_T minus ten..._  
_nine..._  
_eight... seven..._ Ty looked over at Holly, who was on his left, then to his right at Daniel.  
_six... five... four... three..._ The craft began to shudder as the engines ignited and the connections between the launch tower and the rocket started to be severed.  
_two..._ The bridge between the tower and the rocket swung away.  
_And liftoff of the EM-1 mission to the moon. This Orion spacecraft will take mammals to the lunar surface for the first time since the last Apawllo mission in 1972. With new technologies and new science techniques, these mammals will be able to find out even more about the history of the moon, and our own planet earth._

Their rocket slowly lifted up from the pad, shaking violently. Their altitude rose...200...400...600 feet and climbing. They accelerated until they were thousands of feet in the air. From the ground, the craft was dwarfed by its billowing cloud of exhaust. He crew were experiencing multiple Gs, but that would only last a few minutes.

Somewhere in the midst of the launch, there were stage separations. _Stage one decoupling...stage separation complete. Stage two decoupling...stage separation complete._ T

he rumbling finally died down, and the astronauts were given the OK to unbuckle themselves. They looked around at one another, as if waiting for someone else to do it first, then Ty decided to be that someone. One by one their seat belts came off, and...

...weightlessness.


	2. Chapter 2

One by one, the crew members followed suit in unbuckling their straps. There was momentary silence as everyone took in the feeling of being in perpetual free fall, then suddenly a "Woohoo!" came from Daniel. That sparked cheers from the rest of the mammals that were likely echoes of the celebration going on down at mission control. When they quieted down, the transmission came in from ground control, telling them to get back in their seats. They would be executing an insertion burn in order to intercept, and dock with, a module that had already been sent into orbit some weeks prior.

Said module would have extra food, fuel, and life support, as well as part of it serving as their lander for when they were ready to head down to the lunar surface. Once they docked with it, they would begin their journey to the moon.

Even though they had to strap back up, the crew were allowed to at least have their helmets off, now. They all took the opportunity and then made their ways back to the seats and secured themselves.  Tyler looked over at the otter who sat next to him and grinned, then said to mission control, "This is Tyler Burns, pilot of the Orion spacecraft in orbit. We are all set for the maneuver."

_Copy that, Tyler. Throttling in thirty seconds._

After thirty seconds, they could feel the slight push of their rocket behind them, changing their trajectory to an elliptical one which would eventually bring them down to meet with their lander module. There was a whole lot of silence and admiration of the pitch black void that lay beyond the walls of their spacecraft. Mixed in, there were occasional messages from ground control checking in on them.

Finally, they were alerted to their approach on their target. Retrograde thrusters were fired, docking procedures were carried out - nothing that Ty hadn't trained for - then their two crafts were finally together. The hatch opened and suddenly it felt like there was much more room to spread out. Once again, the crew reveled in the novelty of being weightless. However, they eventually had to actually start working.

After one last burn to bring their trajectory to one that would intercept the moon in its orbit, they were more or less free to move about the spacecraft. Tyler immediately got everyone together. "Alright. I want to clear something up right away. Contrary to popular belief, I am not Fox McCloud. I don't want anyone calling me that, or calling me Starfox, because this isn't a video game." He couldn't help grinning at the thought, though.

A chuckle came from a couple of the crew members. None of them had planned on giving him the nickname, but the suggestion was funny. Samuel said, "No worries, Ty. We'll just call you Ty."

"Good." came the reply, "Now-" he was interrupted by a warning sound from an instrument panel. Ana floated over to where a small red light was blinking, studied the readout for a second, then she turned back to them. "Debris. It hit the docking port, of all places." That earned sighs from the rest of the crew, and a couple of "dammit"s. "It should be a simple weld, and everything will be back to normal."

The red fox raised his paw in the air. "I'll do it. It'll be quick, and then hopefully no other mishaps will come up for the rest of the way." Ana nodded and looked back at the instrument panel. Samuel made his way to a comms station and slipped on a headset. The two science officers, Daniel and Holly, went to get their space suits off and then headed to the main module and started to get various experiments ready. Might as well, seeing as they were going to be on the way to the moon for a few days' time.

Tyler took in a deep breath, then went to the airlock. He already had his flight suit on, so all the he had to do was secure his helmet again and he was good to go. The fox sealed the inner bulkhead, then opened up the outer one. He was immediately reminded of how silent and motionless empty space was.

Planet Earth still glowed a deep blue underneath him, and it was beautiful. No picture or video could do the view justice. It was simply remarkable. After his moments of admiration, Ty used the various handles on the side of the spacecraft to get over to the port where the two modules had docked. Sure enough, there was a small chunk of metal lodged in the space between the two docking ports.

The fox reached behind him for an arm that was attached to the hull that he could attach himself to. That way, he could apply significant force and not be pushed away from the reaction. Once the arm was secured, Tyler used a sort of heavy-duty tweezers to grab the debris and pull it out. The result was a small hole that was rapidly expelling oxygen from inside the craft.

"Alright. Run a reset of the docking port, now, then give me a scan of the surroundings. I want to know if there's any other debris around us." Tyler said through his comms, and Samuel immediately gave him an answer. "I can tell you right now that there's nothing detectable. But you should still be careful." A few seconds later, the claw-like pins on either side of the port opened up, almost like one might stretch and wiggle their fingers, and then settled back on the port, sufficiently locked in place. Then, the fox saw that there were a few minor tears in the outer hull. He moved to weld them. Meanwhile, Ana made her way to the crew cabin.

Tyler looked up from his work on the capsule, then something caught his eye. A spinning, bright object had stood out from the blackness of space in the corner of his vision, and it was headed to them. It wouldn’t seem like a threat, but in space, even a tiny piece of metal, a screw, or even a paint chip could be extremely dangerous. The fox reached over to the little panel on he arm of his suit and pressed the button to turn on comms again. “Uhh, be advised, we have some more debris headed our way. We may need to use RCS to avoid it."

Samuel’s voice came on. "Gotcha, Ty. We’ll-” he was cut off by the impact of the debris. It had been moving faster than he thought, and punctured a tank mounted on the side of the craft, causing an explosion that was eerily silent in the void of space.


	3. Chapter 3

The explosion sent the entire structure spinning, and Ty suddenly was very grateful for the robotic arm that was holding him in place. If not for that, he would be floating helplessly away. Luckily, his crew reacted quickly and was able to use the reaction control system to arrest the rotation after only about twenty harrowing seconds.  
  
There was silence for several more seconds as the universe seemed to catch its breath. The quiet was broken by a transmission from the ground. " _Orion crew, this is mission control. What happened up there_?"  
  
Tyler responded as he made his way past the exploded tank and to the hatch back into the ship. "There was debris that we couldn't detect. It punctured one of the radial tanks before we could react and exploded... From out here, it looks like there's no major external damage." It was now that the fox looked down his muzzle at the glass of the helmet that he noticed a tiny crack in the material. He redoubled his efforts to get back inside.   
  
Another bout of silence came over the comms as Ty got through the airlock, then ground control spoke up again. " _Well...thank god you're alright, Burns. It could have been a lot worse._ "   
  
"No kidding." The tod agreed as he began removing his pressure suit. Once it was all off, he naturally ran a paw through both his tail and his ears after them having been restricted in the suit. As he began to float to the main module, Ty said, "Alright, someone give me diagnostics. Any systems damaged or anything that might warrant terminating the mission?"   
  
Holly responded, "Things that weren't tied down well are loose and floating. Other than that, all the equipment's fine. But Daniel, he's..." the she-wolf hesitated. "He knocked his head on something while we were spinning and he's unconscious. Then, his leg was impaled on his pen, of all things. I have him in the med-bay right now." That got a reaction from the rest of the crew. They all rushed to that section of the craft to see.   
  
Sure enough, the otter was laying on - or rather, strapped onto - a sort of operating table. Wrapped around Daniel's leg was a crimson-stained cloth. Ana's paws went over her mouth at the sight. Getting injured in space was very much more dangerous than doing so on earth because of zero gravity. The abnormal environment caused cells to not repair in the same way. Usually for cuts or anything of the like, that meant that the wound may take a very long time to seal up, or possibly not do so at all until under the influence of gravity again.   
  
Their medical facility did come equipped with an experimental infrared laser that might help. It would excite the mitochondria in the cells to speed up the healing. However, it hadn't been tested very much, and was mainly brought just to see if it worked reliably. It also was unknown it it would work on large wounds like this. But it was all they had.   
  
Holly readied a special transparent adhesive to apply to the otter's leg. Then, she took of the cloth. Almost immediately, blood started to leak from the hole. Tyler grimaced as he watched. After some cleaning and disinfection, the adhesive was wrapped around where the cloth had been. After that, the wolf maneuvered a jointed metal arm with a sort of half-cylinder on the end of it. Holly did a few checks, then flipped a switch, and a soft red glow began emanating from the device that was on the end of the arm. Hopefully, this would help Daniel heal faster.   
  
The tod stared for a few more moments, then called the others over to the command module. Once everyone was there, a video connection was established with ground control. Their flight director, a horse named Roger Lawrence, appeared onscreen. Ty then asked the question that was on everyone's minds: "How's this going to affect the mission?"   
  
Roger was the first to answer. "I'm starting to think I want you grounded." That got a low murmur from the crew. But he did have a point. The space program was government-funded, and any mishap on a mission that ended badly could potentially lose them a significant amount of their support from the higher-ups. That wasn't to say the horse wasn't going to hear the astronauts out, though.   
  
Samuel spoke up. "I don't think it's too much of a hinderance to the mission. The tank that was hit was only storing monopropellant," he explained, "that's not a vital fuel, since we have more than one store of it. And Daniel is in a more or less stable condition. If the laser treatment doesn't work, he'll still survive, so long as he's tended to."   
  
"The hare's got a point, sir." Ty said. "Holly can replace Dan in the lander. That's why we've got two engineers and two scientists." The rest of the mammals floating in the module seemed to agree, and looked to the screen for Roger's decision. He sighed, then leaned offscreen to talk to someone. After around a quarter of a minute of that, the flight director brought his attention back to the astronauts he was supervising.   
  
"Alright. You're continuing on to the moon."


End file.
